EURO 2024 and facing the Nazi past

Do football events mix with politics? Have they always been exclusive spaces of celebration? Can they serve as platforms to acknowledge difficult pasts and relationships with authoritarian regimes?

I set out to explore these questions during UEFA EURO 2024, organized in ten different host cities in Germany from June 12^th to July 14^th. I travelled across the country to follow the activities of the newly launched comprehensive program “Football and Remembrance,” organized by the DFB (German Football Association) Cultural Foundation in collaboration with the World Jewish Congress and the NGO What Matters. This initiative aimed to “commemorate the National Socialist era and the many victims of German crimes.” In total, 21 institutions offered football-related programming throughout the country and in the vicinity of the ten host cities.

The vote before the matches

This remembrance program gained even more significance as German citizens voted in the 2024 European Parliament Election on June 9^th, just days before the tournament’s opening match. On June 14^th, the day of the first game in which Germany beat Scotland 5-1, the performance of Julian Nagelsmann’s team was sharing Twitter/X trending topics with the electoral results. The results alarmed many left-wing political parties and football fan bases. The far-right political party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), secured 15.89% of votes, winning 15 seats and finishing second only to the Union, an alliance made between the Christian Democrats Union (CSU) and Christian Social Union, which obtained 30.02% of votes and 29 seats. 

Visiting places of memory

Amid the concerns over the future influence of the AfD in the European Parliament and the excitement generated by the EURO 2024, the very first continental tournament after Germany’s post-reunification in 1989, I had the opportunity to attend various memorials, places of remembrance, stadiums and museums participating in the Football and Remembrance program. My research trip included visits to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, where I joined the “Football in the Dachau concentration camp | Tour,” the NS-Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne, the Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centre, which offered through the HSV Fan Projekt the city tour “Stories of Persecution during National Socialism and the HSV,” and the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, where a special tour was organized for English supporters and representatives of the Football Association (FA). 

I also visited the Büren-Wewelsburg Memorial Museum Wewelsburg and its guided exhibition, “More than just a game – football under National Socialism”, as well as the “Sports. Crowds. Power.” exhibition at the Sports Museum on the grounds of the 1936 Summer Olympics, adjacent to Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. In addition to these program sites, I visited stadiums, museums and representatives of Werder Bremen, FC St. Pauli, Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen, and Bayern Munich. I also engaged with the Kurt Landauer Foundation, the German Football Museum and the German Olympic Museum, each contributing through different angles and levels of engagement to German football’s culture of remembrance. 

Do football events mix with politics? 

For nearly sixty years, the DFB avoided critically examining its role and responsibilities during the Nazi regime. It was only in the lead-up to the 2006 FIFA World Cup that things started to change. Concerned about its image and the potential economic, political, and diplomatic implications of hosting the global event, the DFB commissioned an independent investigation into its Nazi past. In parallel, several international companies, including BMW, Audi, Hugo Boss and Chase Manhattan Bank, were acknowledging their involvement as perpetrators and providing compensation to Holocaust victims. The investigation, led by historian Nils Havemann, revealed that the DFB and its leaders had close ties to prominent figures in the Nazi regime. The organization reflected West Germany’s memory politics by not coming to terms with such a difficult heritage. Nowadays, visitors attending the German Football Museum and the ‘More than Just a Game’ exhibition at KreisMuseum Wewelsburg can learn how the DFB was incorporated into the Nazi structure and voluntarily supported the new regime.

Football has long served as a mirror for societal changes, and this is particularly evident in how the DFB and German football have addressed their Nazi past since the turn of the century. The macro-social dynamics of dealing with this past have evolved, largely influenced by decades of political activism and a strong culture of remembrance promoted by left-wing football fan bases in Germany (for further information, please read it here). As a result, the Football and Remembrance program became a central part of the EURO 2024 events, broadening the dialogue on the relationship between National Socialism, German football, and German society.

Within the program’s content and broader German society, it was possible to identify a shared belief that confronting the past is essential to maintaining a democratic political culture. Football, due to its omnipresent aspect – it is part of the national cultural heritage of German people, being debated and followed in all social and political spheres, can also play a pivotal role in safeguarding democracy. The Football and Remembrance program showcased numerous historical examples of how politics and football have intersected in a negative perspective. For instance, under Nazi rule, football clubs were forced to expel Jewish players, many of whom did it voluntarily. Fourteen Southern football clubs, including famous clubs such as FC Bayern Munich, Eintracht Frankfurt, Stuttgarter Kickers, FC Kaiserslautern, and 1.FC Nuremberg, signed the Stuttgarter Erklärung (Resolution of Stuttgart) and voluntarily added the Arierparagraf (Aryan paragraph) to their club bylaws, leading to the mandatory expulsion of Jewish members in 1933. Moreover, the Nazis banned women from playing the sport, as the regime insisted that they focused on domestic roles and childbearing to support the state’s ideological goals.

In an interview with Raimund Lazar, a tour guide at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, the intersection of football and politics was defended: “It is not that difficult to realize that football and politics mix. We are constantly fighting to keep stadiums free of right-wing extremists, which is why it is important to push back so hard. With the European election results and the rise of the AfD, promoting the culture of remembrance makes even more sense.”  

Do football events are exclusive spaces of celebration? 

While goals and beautiful plays were celebrated in the stadiums of EURO 2024, the Football and Remembrance program served as a powerful reminder that many football venues were once sites of suffering during the Nazi regime. As early as the 1920s, football became a major spectator sport in Germany. From 1933 onward, the Nazi Gleichschaltung (shorthand for the process of Nazification) had a remarkable influence on German football to promote and reinforce Nazi ideology, particularly ideas of racial superiority, as well as to aid in the military preparation for WWII. Football clubs and stadiums were heavily used for propaganda, with mass events, marches, and rallies that drew thousands of people, disseminating and reinforcing the Führer principle.

Stadiums were also repurposed as sites of deportation to concentration camps. At the tour outside the FC Köln stadium in Cologne, the history of Mungersdorf Sports Park as a deportation camp was recounted in great detail. In Hamburg, a tour focusing on the persecution of HSV members under National Socialism revealed how the club’s original football pitch was transformed in 1941 into a deportation center for sending Jews to ghettos and concentration camps like Riga (Latvia) and Theresienstadt (Czech Republic). In Bremen, the Weserstadion assumed a different but equally disturbing role. According to Christopher Pülm, a social worker at Bremen Fan Projekt, the stadium was used as an auction site to sell Jewish furniture illegally confiscated by the Nazis. Such a past has yet to be recognized by the club in its museum and stadium tour. These examples demonstrate how stadiums can be places of community building and a positive sense of belonging but also of suffering, community division and exclusion. 

Can football events serve as a platform to acknowledge difficult pasts and relationships with authoritarian regimes?

The idea that the past cannot be disconnected from the present is prevalent within German society and is visible through stickers, banners, and graffiti in many cities I visited. This sentiment was especially prominent before and during the European elections. Theoretically speaking, this firm stance to remember and confront the Nazi past at all costs is directly influenced by a “new temporal regime,” a concept developed by German philosopher Alleida Assmann. According to Assmann (2013), the Nazi past is a type of “past that does not go away,” challenging the modern notion of irreversible, linear, and progressive time. In other words, the legacy of the Nazi regime is viewed as a historical, socio-cultural and political continuum in German society and football, demanding active engagement from fan bases and programs like Football and Remembrance to directly or indirectly expose and tackle contemporary discrimination acts such as antisemitism, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia.

During my visit to the German Football Museum, tour guides emphasized that the exhibition on National Socialism serves as a ‘warning’ to prevent history from repeating itself. At the ‘More than Just a Game’ exhibition at KreisMuseum Wewelsburg, the tour guides echoed the same sentiment: “The Nazi regime did not stop in 1945; there is a continuity in antisemitism practices, to the point we can update cases every week.” 

The EURO 2024, through the Football and Remembrance project, proved to be a powerful platform to address and confront any traces of the deliberate collective amnesia around the Nazi past that still characterizes some groups in German society. Football-based tours organized at concentration camps were particularly powerful in achieving this outcome. Additionally, museum exhibitions and city tours of persecution sites, marked by symbolic memory anchors such as Stolpersteine, created profound moments of reflection for dozens of participants. One of the positive legacies of the EURO 2024 is the realization that football events can serve as platforms for critical discussions about society’s difficult pasts and its relationships with authoritarian regimes. However, the extent of the effectiveness of this effort seems to rely upon how much societies and fan bases welcome politics into football stadiums.

Thinking points

1. Contrary to the so-called “Principle of Political Neutrality” (Grix and James, 2024), often cited by football officials before or during major continental or global tournaments to avoid debating political issues, UEFA’s two-match ban on Turkish defender Demiral for displaying what was considered a right-wing symbol demonstrates that UEFA took a firm political stance. The DFB reinforced this message by making it clear that right-wing extremism and its symbols have no place in their events. This incident prompts an important question for other football nations: How do football authorities in your country interpret and apply the principle of political neutrality?
2. Stadiums are significant icons in the landscape of any city or country, often symbolizing regional or national identity. Their purposes and uses can shift dramatically under different political regimes. How have football stadiums in your country been used since its construction? What historical “time windows” does it open, revealing insights into how the local community has experienced and navigated it during different political regimes?
3. According to Udo Merkel (2012), football mirrors the changes in Germany and often promotes transformation before other sectors of society catch up. With this in mind, how have football clubs in your country contributed to fostering social responsibility and accountability in confronting widespread historical and intentional amnesia related to authoritarian regimes?

Find out more

Assmann, A. (2013). Transformations of the Modern Time Regime. In B. Bevernage & C. Lorenz (Eds.), Breaking up Time (1st ed., pp. 39–56). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666310461.39

Grix, J., & James, M. (2024). The politicisation of sport and the principle of political neutrality: a contradiction in terms?. The International Sports Law Journal, 1-10.

Merkel, U. (2012). Football fans and clubs in Germany: Conflicts, crises and compromises. Soccer & Society, 13(3), 359–376. https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2012.655505

Tobar, F. B., Ramshaw, G., & Fritz, F. (2024). Never Again! Fandom and the Culture of Remembrance in German Football. Leisure Sciences, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2024.2388261

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